Papists and Prejudice Popular Anti Catholicism and Anglo Irish Conflict in The North East of England 1845 70 Ludger Körntgen

Papists and Prejudice Popular Anti
Catholicism and Anglo Irish Conflict in

the North East of England 1845 70
Ludger Körntgen
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/papists-and-prejudice-popular-anti-catholicism-and-an
glo-irish-conflict-in-the-north-east-of-england-1845-70-ludger-korntgen/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
Anti Catholicism in Victorian England Routledge Library

Editions The Victorian World Norman
https://ebookmeta.com/product/anti-catholicism-in-victorian-
england-routledge-library-editions-the-victorian-world-norman/
War Commemoration and Civic Culture in the North East

of England, 1854–1914 1st Edition Hinton
https://ebookmeta.com/product/war-commemoration-and-civic-
culture-in-the-north-east-of-england-1854-1914-1st-edition-
hinton/
War Commemoration and Civic Culture in the North East

of England 1854 1914 1st Edition Hinton Guy
https://ebookmeta.com/product/war-commemoration-and-civic-
culture-in-the-north-east-of-england-1854-1914-1st-edition-
hinton-guy/
The Shamrock and the Cross Irish American Novelists

Shape American Catholicism 1st Edition Eileen P.
Sullivan
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-shamrock-and-the-cross-irish-
american-novelists-shape-american-catholicism-1st-edition-eileen-
p-sullivan/
The Rise of Popular Literacy in Victorian England: The
Influence of Private Choice and Public Policy David
Mitch
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-rise-of-popular-literacy-in-
victorian-england-the-influence-of-private-choice-and-public-
policy-david-mitch/
Public Administration in the Middle East and North

Africa 1st Edition Shahjahan Bhuiyan
https://ebookmeta.com/product/public-administration-in-the-
middle-east-and-north-africa-1st-edition-shahjahan-bhuiyan/
The Anglo Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England

400 1066 1st Edition Marc Morris
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-anglo-saxons-a-history-of-the-
beginnings-of-england-400-1066-1st-edition-marc-morris/
Daring Dynasty Custom Conflict and Control in Early

Tudor England Mark R Horowitz
https://ebookmeta.com/product/daring-dynasty-custom-conflict-and-
control-in-early-tudor-england-mark-r-horowitz/
Anti Methodism and Theological Controversy in

Eighteenth Century England The Struggle for True
Religion 1st Edition Simon Lewis
https://ebookmeta.com/product/anti-methodism-and-theological-
controversy-in-eighteenth-century-england-the-struggle-for-true-
religion-1st-edition-simon-lewis/
“Papists” and Prejudice
Copyright © 2013. Cambridge Scholars Publisher. All rights reserved.
Bush, Jonathan. “Papists” and Prejudice : Popular Anti-Catholicism and Anglo-Irish Conflict in the North East of England,
1845-70, Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=1753498.
Created from nottingham on 2021-07-14 03:16:35.
“Papists” and Prejudice:
Popular Anti-Catholicism and Anglo-Irish
Conflict in the North East of England, 1845-70
By
Jonathan Bush
“Papists” and Prejudice:
Popular Anti-Catholicism and Anglo-Irish Conflict in the North East of England, 1845-70,
by Jonathan Bush
This book first published 2013
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Bush
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-4672-4, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4672-1

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements .................................................................................... vi
Conventions ............................................................................................... vii
Abbreviations ........................................................................................... viii
Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Chapter One
The Ideology of Anti-Catholicism in North East England ........................ 10
Chapter Two
Petitioning the Pope: The Response to the Restoration
of the Hierarchy, 1850 ............................................................................... 35
Chapter Three
“No Popery!”: The Defence of the “Protestant Constitution” ................... 71
Chapter Four
Enlightened Bigotry: Anti-Catholicism and Liberty................................ 109
Chapter Five
“Popery” Unleashed: Irish Immigration and the Catholic Revival .......... 143
Chapter Six
Irish Immigration and Sectarian Violence ............................................... 192
Conclusion ............................................................................................... 234
Bibliography ............................................................................................ 236
Index ........................................................................................................ 264
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would not have been written without the assistance of a number
of people. Aside from the support and encouragement of my family, I am
particularly grateful to Professor Donald MacRaild for inspiring me to
research this area in the first place and also Dr. Sheridan Gilley for his
support, advice, and encyclopaedic knowledge of nineteenth century
Catholic history. I would also like to thank the staff of the public libraries,
university libraries, and archives in the North East, particularly Newcastle
Central Library and Durham University Special Collections. My thesis
(and ultimately this book) would probably not have seen the light of day if
I had not received a very generous (and unexpected) one-year studentship
from Durham University to allow me the luxury of working full-time for a
year on my research. Mr. Alastair Fraser also deserves a special mention
for proof-reading my script and pointing out some glaring inaccuracies.
CONVENTIONS
County Durham refers to the pre-1973 boundaries of the old county of

Durham and is used throughout to avoid confusion with the city of
Durham. The county at this time stretched from the south of the Tyne to
the northern banks of the Tees (including Stockton and Hartlepool).
Tyneside incorporates those settlements on the banks of the Tyne
(including Tynemouth, North Shields, Wallsend and Newcastle).
The word “Evangelical(s)” (upper case) refers exclusively to the

distinctive body of Low-Church Anglicans of that name. The word
“evangelical(s)” (lower case) refers either to the general culture itself or
evangelicals of all persuasion. However, capitalisation of organisation
names, such as the Evangelical Alliance, is retained.
The word ‘popular anti-Catholicism’ in the title, and its usage throughout
the text, refers to a culture shared by all classes (including both lay and
clerical), rather than a specific class grouping (such as the working class)
or a specific religious denomination.
ABBREVIATIONS
TWAS Tyne and Wear Archives Service
DCRO Durham County Record Office
DULSP Durham University Library Special Collections
RCHNDA Roman Catholic Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Archives

INTRODUCTION
Until comparatively recently, anti-Catholic feeling was considered to

be a central tenet of English national identity.1 Developing out of an
atmosphere of bitter religious divisions in the sixteenth century, anti-
Catholicism (broadly defined as fear of, and hostility towards, the Catholic
Church and its adherents) reached its zenith as a cultural force in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.2 Even as the era of the Gordon Riots
gave way to a more enlightened age symbolised by the passing of the
Roman Catholic Relief Acts of 1778, 1781 and 1829, old prejudices
continued to resurface. 3 Indeed, Mary Hickman has suggested that anti-
Catholicism “remained the sentiment which most clearly defined the
nation” well after 1829.4.The principal reasons for its continued longevity
during the Victorian period are well-known. These included the infusing
of strands of evangelical thought with anti-Catholicism; the growing
influence of Tractarianism and, later, Ritualism, within the Church of
England; the rise of nonconformity with an evangelical anti-Catholic
worldview; and the visible resurgence of the Roman Catholic religion
greatly influenced by ultramontane priests and large numbers of Irish
1
John Wolffe has dated the centrality of anti-Catholicism to British national
identity until as recently as Pope John Paul II’s visit to Britain in 1982. See John
Wolffe, ‘Change and Continuity in British Anti-Catholicism, 1829-1982’,
Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789, ed. by Nicholas Atkin and Frank
Tallett (London: The Hambledon Press, 1996), p. 68.
2
For the relationship between anti-Catholicism and national identity in the post-
Reformation period, see C.Z. Wiener, ‘The Beleaguered Isle: A Study of
Elizabethan and Early Jacobean Anti-Catholicism’, Past and Present, 51 (1971),
pp. 27-62; David Loades, 'The Origins of English Protestant Nationalism', Studies
in Church History, 18 (1982), pp. 297-307; R. Clifton, ‘The Popular Fear of
Catholics during the English Revolution’, Past and Present, 52 (1971), pp. 168-87;
and J.H. Hexter, ‘The Protestant Revival and the Catholic Question in England
1778-1829’, Journal of Modern History, 8 (1936), pp. 297-319.
3
Wolffe, ‘Change and Continuity’, p. 68.
4
Mary J. Hickman, Religion, Class and Identity: The State, the Catholic Church
and the Education of the Irish in Britain (Ashgate: Aldershot, 1995), p. 43.
2 Introduction
immigrants.5 Whatever the reasons for its prevalence, Victorian anti-

Catholicism was more than simply a theological standpoint against the
Church of Rome. Its many different and often disparate strands, whether
political, social, economic or cultural, helped to define national identity
not only in England but also in the rest of the British Isles and the
Anglophone world generally.6
It is perhaps only from a regional, rather than national or even
transnational, perspective where it is possible to observe the way in which
anti-Catholicism influenced, and was influenced by, specific cultural
contexts. The purpose of this book, therefore, is to examine anti-
Catholicism in a relatively neglected but potentially fruitful regional area
(the North East of England) during a specifically heightened period of
5
For a broader discussion of nineteenth century Protestant evangelical activity, see
David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the
1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989); and D. Englander, ‘The Word
and the World: Evangelicalism in the Victorian City’, Religion in Victorian
Britain, ed. by Parsons, G., II (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988),
pp. 14-38. For the role of Tractarianism within the Church of England, see
Sheridan Gilley, ‘The Church of England in the Nineteenth Century’ A History of
Religion in Britain, pp. 298-303. For the growth of the Catholic community see
E.R. Norman, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (Clarendon
Press: Oxford, 1984); and for the role of Irish immigrants in religious violence:
D.M. MacRaild, Irish Migrants in Modern Britain, 1750-1922 (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1999).
6
For anti-Catholic studies in other areas of the British Isles, see Steve Bruce, No
Pope of Rome: Militant Protestantism in Modern Scotland (Edinburgh:

Mainstream, 1985); P. O’Leary, ‘When was Anti-Catholicism? The Case of
Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Wales’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 56.2
(2005), pp. 308-25. For other Anglophone countries, see Ray Allan Billington, The
Protestant Crusade 1800-1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism
(Quadrangle: Chicago, 1964); J.R. Miller, ‘Anti-Catholic Thought in Victorian
Canada’, Canadian Historical Review, 66 (1985), pp. 474-94; Patrick O’Farrell,
The Catholic Church and Community in Australia: A History (Kensington, New
South Wales, Australia: New South Wales University Press, 1992). For
transnational comparisons, see John Wolffe, ‘Anti-Catholicism and Evangelical
Identity in Britain and the United States, 1830-1860’, Evangelicalism:
Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles,
and Beyond, 1700-1990, ed. by Mark A. Noll, David W. Bebbington, George A.
Rawlyk (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 179-97; J. Wolffe, ‘A
Transatlantic Perspective: Protestantism and National Identities in Mid-
Nineteenth-Century Britain and the United States’, Protestantism and National
Identity: Britain and Ireland, c. 1650-c. 1850, ed. by Tony Claydon and Ian
McBride (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 291-309.
“Papists” and Prejudice 3
anti-Catholic tension (1845-1870).7 The little research carried out on this

subject in this region suggests that this area was largely immune from the
all-encompassing anti-Catholicism evident in other areas of the country.
This theory was first posited by Roger Cooter in 1973 for a dissertation on
the subject of Irish immigration in Newcastle and County Durham which
has recently been published, unchanged, in book form.8 Cooter's research
is based around a theory that, for a variety of political, economic, social
and cultural reasons, anti-Irishness and anti-Catholicism were “notable by
their absence” in the North East. A combination of a dominant Liberal and
Dissenter culture, a well-established and strong Catholic community, a
favourable economic situation and the North East’s isolation from events
in London, ensured that “anti-Catholicism was confined to a very small
minority of devoted upholders of the Establishment”.9 His findings are
crucial for those who wish to posit the theory of a North East
“exceptionalism”, one in which the region’s identity is based upon
isolation from certain cultural trends evident elsewhere in the country,
most notably a uniquely welcoming attitude towards “outsiders”. The
question of this identity has become a hotly contested issue but Cooter’s
theories on the absence of a local anti-Catholic culture, even after nearly
40 years of historical scholarship, largely remain, if not unquestioned, then
certainly broadly accepted.10
There are, however, several problems with Cooter’s hypothesis which
this book seeks to address. Firstly, it is well known that many areas in the
North East of England were strongholds of Nonconformity and the North
East generally was the very “citadel of Liberalism”. 11 However, these
generalisations hide disparities between different areas with the relative
importance of various religious groups differing from setting to setting.
7
Limitations of space have prevented this book from including the rest of
Northumberland within its area of study. These years (1845-70) are widely
accepted by historians as the most fruitful for a study of anti-Catholicism owing to
a variety of political and cultural reasons which will be addressed in this book.
8
R.J. Cooter, 'The Irish in County Durham and Newcastle, 1840-1880'
(unpublished MA thesis, University of Durham, 1973); Roger Cooter, When Paddy
Met Geordie: The Irish in County Durham and Northumberland, 1840-80
(Sunderland: University of Sunderland Press, 2005).
9
Cooter, Paddy, p. 102.
10
For a recent discussion on the question of a coherent North East ‘identity’, see
Regional Identities in North East England, 1300-2000, ed. by Adrian Green and
A.J. Pollard (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007).
11
T.J. Nossiter, Influence, Opinion and Political Idioms in Reformed England:
Case Studies from the North East, 1832-74 (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press,
1975), p. 21.
4 Introduction
Durham was an Anglican and (almost by definition) Conservative

stronghold, Presbyterianism was influential in South Shields, Darlington
was effectively run by a Quaker elite, and in Newcastle, “it was the
Quakers, Baptists, and Independents who mattered” politically.12 The
situation outside the major towns was different still where, in many
(although not all) of the Durham pit villages, Primitive Methodism
appealed to the predominantly working class population.13 Anti-
Catholicism was also far from the exclusive domain of Conservative and
Anglican interests. Liberals and Dissenters, particularly the Baptists,
Methodists and Congregationalists that dominated most of the North East,
could be as anti-Catholic as their Anglican and Tory adversaries if the
issue suited them.14 Dissenting support for these campaigns was often not
directly anti-Catholic but their reasons for doing could be coloured by
anti-Catholic arguments. Furthermore, interdenominational co-operation
between Dissenters and Anglican Evangelicals was a common occurrence
in the North East, particularly when confronting the Papal threat.15
Secondly, while there was certainly a long-established tradition of
Catholicism in the North East16, Catholic communities did not, in
themselves, dampen the anti-Catholic mood. There can be no doubt that
these communities experienced an unprecedented expansion during the
mid-nineteenth century. Indeed, the total Catholic population in Newcastle
and County Durham increased from 23,250 in 1847 to 86,397 in 1874.17
The number of places of worship also expanded significantly, funded
12
B.I. Coleman, The Church of England in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: A Social
Geography (London: Historical Association, 1978); Anne Orde, Religion, Business

and Society in North East England: The Pease Family of Darlington in the 19th
Century (Stamford: Shannon Tyas, 2000); Jeff Smith, ‘The Making of a Diocese,
1851-1882’, Newcastle upon Tyne: A Modern History, ed. by Robert Colls and Bill
Lancaster (Chichester: Phillimore, 2001), p. 93.
13
For a discussion on the role of Primitive Methodism which draws heavily on
sources from County Durham, see Robert Colls, The collier’s rant: song and
culture in the industrial village (London: Croom Helm, 1977).
14
For the role of Dissenters in anti-Catholicism, see Paz, Popular Anti-
Catholicism, chapter 6.
15
For a study of evangelical co-operation in the North East, see A.F. Munden,
‘The Origin of Evangelical Anglicanism in Newcastle-upon-Tyne’, Archaeologia
Aeliana, Fifth Series, Vol XI (1983), pp. 301-7.
16
For a general introduction to the Catholic Church in the North East that
combines many local parish histories see Michael Morris and Leo Gooch, Down
Your Aisles: The Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle (Hartlepool: Northern Cross,
2000).
17
primarily by voluntary subscriptions from the laity.18 This increase in

Catholic numbers had initially overwhelmed the clergy. At Gateshead, the
only priest available ministered, with one derelict warehouse, to 3,000
Catholics in 1851.19 Between 1846 and 1876, however, there was a 76%
increase in church buildings in the same area, with 56 churches, chapels
and missions established by the latter date.20 These communities, large and
growing in confidence, could just as easily act as a catalyst for religious
controversy rather than moderate anti-Catholic feeling.21 This was
certainly true historically. The continuation of the Catholic faith by gentry
families during the recusant period had, in turn, generated a long and
parallel tradition of anti-Catholicism which included frenzied attacks on
Mass houses during the 1745 Jacobite Rising; a large, very active, and
nationally renowned Newcastle Protestant Association agitating during the
passing of the Catholic Relief Act of 1788; and a pamphlet war during the
debates on the Catholic Relief Bill in the 1820s involving some of the
country’s leading anti-Catholic zealots that was unparalleled anywhere
else in the country.22
The increase in Catholic numbers and places of worship in the North
East was “almost wholly attributable to the Irish” as English Catholics
accounted for less than 5% of the Catholic population in the region.23
Indeed, there is no doubt that the region proved to be an attractive
destination for Irish immigrants during this period. The Irish were
generally attracted to the burgeoning industries of the region, which
18
Morris and Gooch, Down Your Aisles, p. 12.
19
K.S. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1963), p. 125.
20
21
Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism, chapter 3.
22
For local anti-Catholicism in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, see
C. Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth Century England, c. 1714-80
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 155-56, 208, 211; L.P.
Crangle, ‘The Roman Catholic Community in Sunderland from the 16th Century’,
Antiquities of Sunderland, 24 (1969), p. 66; Leo Gooch, ‘Lingard v. Barrington, et
al: Ecclesiastical Politics in Durham 1805-29’, Durham University Journal, 85.1
(1993), p. 7; C.L. Scott, ‘A Comparative Re-examination of Anglo-Irish Relations
in Nineteenth Century Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle-upon-Tyne’
(unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Durham, 1998), p. 96. Leo Gooch has
noted that 33 anti-Catholic petitions were sent from the North East between 1820
and 1829: Leo Gooch, ‘From Jacobite to Radical: the Catholics of North East
England, 1688-1850’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Durham, 1989),
p. 262.
23
Cooter, Paddy, pp. 45.
6 Introduction
included, among others, shipbuilding on Tyneside, coal mining in the

Durham pit villages and the ironstone industries of the Cleveland Hills.24
The total number of Irish-born in County Durham and Newcastle rose
from 8,264 in 1841 to 44,419 in 1871. Most of the major districts in the
region experienced a huge influx of immigrants during this period with the
large Catholic communities in a number of the smaller towns and villages
such as Crook, Jarrow and Blackhill, almost wholly attributable to Irish
immigrants.25 In the larger towns, such as Newcastle and Sunderland, Irish
immigrants joined the already long-established Catholic communities.
Nevertheless, the reception of these immigrant communities by the
English and Protestant host population has been a matter of some debate
among historians and, in particular, the long-held assertion that English-
Irish relations in North East England were relatively harmonious has been
criticised in recent years. This is particularly evident in the work of Frank
Neal, whose pioneering research on English-Irish violence in the North
East region can be viewed as a direct response to Cooter (and has been
hugely influential in setting down preliminary markers for this study).26
Finally, although there were definite similarities in the religious,
political, and ethnic composition of many areas of the North East, it would
be dangerous to make generalisations about a “regional culture” as a
24
For a detailed breakdown of the occupations undertaken by the Irish in this
region, see Neal, F., ‘Irish Settlement in the North East and North-West of England
in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, The Irish in Victorian Britain: The Local
Dimension, ed. by Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley (Dublin: Four Courts Press,
1999), pp. 86-7. For a local town-based survey of the Irish in Gateshead which also
makes use of census records, see F. Neal, ‘A Statistical Profile of the Irish
Community in Gateshead – The Evidence of the 1851 Census’, Immigrants and
Minorities, 27.1 (2009), pp. 50-81.
25
J.M. Tweedy, Popish Elvet: The History of St. Cuthbert’s, Durham: Part II
(Durham: [St. Cuthbert’s Church], 1984), pp. 4-5.
26
Studies of the Irish in North East England have tended to fall within two camps.
Those who agree with Cooter’s findings, such as S. Doherty, English and Irish
Catholics in Northumberland, 1745-1860 (unpublished doctoral thesis, Queen’s
University, Belfast, 1987); MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting; and Joan
Allen, ‘“High Days and Holy Days”; St. Patrick's Day in the North East of
England, c.1850-1900’, Faith of our Fathers: Popular Culture and Belief in Post
Reformation England, Ireland and Wales, ed. by Joan Allen and Richard C. Allen
(Newcastle, 2009), and those studies which, to varying degrees have questioned
this harmonious relationship: Frank Neal, English-Irish Conflict in the North East
of England (Salford: University of Salford Press, 1992); D.M. Jackson, ‘“Garibaldi
or the Pope!”: Newcastle’s Irish Riot, 1866’, North East History, 35 (2001), pp.
49-76.
whole. Indeed, the assumption that the “North East” is a monolithic area
representing a unique and coherent identity is open to question. In
commenting on the elusiveness of regional identity, Green and Pollard
have argued that:
“Finding regional identity in the past, in any region in England, is

problematic. The region is elusive and it is protean. Whichever way we
choose to look at it, it is unlikely to be all inclusive, all embracing or
continuous. We have multiple social identities and look different ways,
deal with different agencies and move in different directions according to
the different aspects of our lives”.27
This is particularly the case in the North East where, Purdue has
argued, the region has been “endowed with a somewhat spurious and
certainly unhistorical, precision, character and unity”.28 As will be shown
in this book, different forms of anti-Catholicism, which were often the
result of local peculiarities, existed in different areas even within Tyneside
and in County Durham so a regional anti-Catholic culture cannot be
viewed as either coherent or consistent. Furthermore, the North East
generally may have felt isolated from events in London but it did not
necessarily follow that it was immune from the anti-Catholic strands of
thought evident elsewhere, nor was it slow in responding to national anti-
Catholic political campaigns.
Clearly, therefore, the cultural conditions necessary for the development
of anti-Catholicism were as evident in the North East as other places noted
for their virulent anti-Catholic cultures. There was, however, no uniform
“North East” anti-Catholicism. Indeed, it is the intention of this book to

show the variety of ways in which anti-Catholicism influenced, and was
influenced by, the political, social and cultural climate inherent in different
parts of Tyneside and the county of Durham. Expanding in particular on
the theories of Denis Paz in adopting a broader perspective of viewing
different expressions of anti-Catholicism, rather than purely a manifestation
of one specific form of anti-Catholicism (such as anti-Irishness) it will
highlight not only the strength of certain forms, but also the way in which
this ideology could be moulded and manipulated in different areas even
27
Adrian Green and S. Pollard, 'Introduction: Identifying Regions', Green and
Pollard, Regional Identities, p. 23. For the opposing viewpoint, see N. McCord,
‘The Regional Identity of North East England in the Nineteenth and Early
Twentieth Centuries’, Issues of Regional Identity, ed. by E. Royle (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1979), pp. 102-17.
28
A.W. Purdue, ‘The History of the North-East in the Modern Period: Themes,
Concerns, and Debates Since the 1960s’, Northern History, 42.1 (2005), p. 108.
8 Introduction
within regions. It will therefore not posit a theory of a “regional anti-

Catholic culture”, but instead suggest the existence of a variety of different
anti-Catholic “cultures” within the area of study. It will also argue that the
context of the “North East” did not, as has previously been suggested, act
as a bar to anti-Catholic expression, but, on the contrary, may even have
assisted in the developments of certain forms of it. Finally, it will highlight
the proactive role of the local Catholic community in sectarian
controversy. Catholics did not remain passive in the face of anti-Catholic
extremism. Indeed, the strength and conduct of the local Catholic
community in defence of their religion may have actively assisted in the
development of local anti-Catholic cultures.
In order to try to show this, the study will take a thematic approach,
examining the ideological, political, cultural and social aspects of anti-
Catholicism. Chapter One will concentrate on the ideology of popular anti-
Catholicism in the North East of England in order to highlight the various
strands of thought which provided the backdrop to the events examined in
subsequent chapters. It will demonstrate the way in which these different
strands did not represent a single unifying ideology but were often
contested and moulded by peculiarly Victorian concerns. Indeed, these
strands were as prevalent in the North East of England as they were
elsewhere.
The next three chapters will examine anti-Catholicism’s political
dimension and the local response to the different politico-religious events
of the period that drew upon different aspects of anti-Catholic ideology.
Chapter Two will examine the local response to the biggest anti-Catholic
political event of the period: the Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850. It
will suggest that the hysteria generated by this event occurred because it
enabled a broad range of all political and religious groups to unite,
however briefly, in a common hatred of the Papal measure. In the North
East, not only were town meetings and petitions initiated just as readily as
other areas of the country but were, in certain areas, also just as likely to
be directed against those Anglicans who had adopted the “Popish”
practices of Tractarianism. Chapter Three will concentrate on the local
response to political events which played on “Conservative” and/or
Anglican interpretations of the “Protestant Constitution”, such as the
parliamentary “concessions” granted to Catholics in the form of the
Maynooth Grant and Irish disestablishment, as well as a raft of changes
designed to relax the laws on Catholics generally. Given the
Liberal/Dissenter dominance of much of the North East, it would be
expected that this aspect of anti-Catholic ideology would hold little sway.
However, this chapter will show that, although there were clear
weaknesses, many places responded just as vehemently as other areas of

the country. Chapter Four will examine the local response to political
events which played on Liberal notions of anti-Catholicism. Events such
as the campaign for Italian independence, with its charismatic leader
Giuseppe Garibaldi, as well as the campaigns for the inspection of
convents and the release of the Madiai, infused the “Liberal” ideologies of
internationalism and religious liberty with a specifically anti-Catholic
outlook. The Liberal slant on anti-Catholicism may have appeared less
bigoted than its Conservative equivalent, but its arguments were just as
likely to infuriate the Catholic community. Indeed, not only will this
chapter highlight the popularity of Liberal anti-Catholicism in certain parts
of the North East, but will also show the way in which the strength of the
local Catholic communities could be just as militant in combatting these
attacks on their religion, most notably in defence of their spiritual leader,
the Pope.
Anti-Catholicism was more than just apparent in the response to
political events, particularly when the Catholic threat appeared to be closer
to home. Chapter Five will, therefore, investigate the Protestant reaction to
the growth of the Catholic community in the North East of England.
Generally speaking, the outward signs of “Popery”, such as the building of
churches and public processions, with a few notable exceptions, passed off
with little comment, so long as their activities did not directly affect the
Protestant community. The real battleground, however, was fought over
the souls of Catholics. Indeed, local Protestant evangelicals of all
persuasions saw the influx of Irish Catholics into the industrialised towns
and cities of the North East as an opportunity for proselytism. The
situation was further exacerbated by the strength of the local Catholic

community, who ironically assisted in the development of this anti-
Catholic culture by their defence against the Protestant proselytisers.
Finally, Chapter Six will turn its attention to religious violence in the
North East of England. This region was not immune from the sectarian
violence which was the product of large scale Irish immigration. Indeed,
this chapter will suggest that there were different forms of religious
violence associated with the Irish that were clearly linked to anti-
Catholicism and dependent not only on the cultural context of the local
area but also the period in which it occurred. For Irish Catholics, violence
could be either an expression of a defence of their religion against anti-
Catholicism, as victims of the anti-Catholicism of the English working
class, or as ritualised theatre against their Irish Protestant countrymen.
CHAPTER ONE
THE IDEOLOGY OF ANTI-CATHOLICISM

IN NORTH EAST ENGLAND
“The great mass of the middle class of the people of England are too much
taken up with affairs of trade to examine ‘vice versa’ the great principles of
Catholicity; books they seldom trouble, the daily and provincial
newspapers form their political and controversial Bible, thousands upon
thousands believe as Gospel truth whatever they read in the newspapers
they are accustomed to peruse . . . Some time ago the papers in England
kept the pulpits at bay, and restrained the bigots from their occupation, but
now both pulpit and press are united in the assault on the church of
Christ”.1
Anti-Catholicism, as a set of ideas and beliefs, represents one of the

most consistent and dominant ideologies in the history of post-
Reformation Britain. Anti-Catholic ideology remained a prominent feature
of Protestant thought well into the nineteenth century2 and the sustained
sectarian tension of the mid-Victorian period in particular brought forth an
explosion of popular anti-Catholic opinion throughout the Anglophone
world. Combining traditional theological polemic with key elements of
Victorian philosophy, anti-Catholicism defined what it meant to be

Protestant and British. It was, as David Hempton suggests, “probably the
most ubiquitous, most eclectic and most adaptable ideology in the post-
Reformation history of the British Isles”.3 While it is possible to unpick
the various doctrinal aspects of anti-Catholic thought, the range of studies
which have examined anti-Catholicism from varying standpoints is
testament to the view that there can be no single unifying theory which can
wholly explain the continuing prevalence of these ideas and beliefs among
1
From the Northumberland and Durham correspondent of the Tablet, 2 October
1852.
2
For the pre-nineteenth century period, see Wiener, ‘The Beleaguered Isle’, pp. 27-
62; Loades, 'English Protestant Nationalism', pp. 297-307; Haydon, Anti-Catholicism.
3
D. Hempton, Religion and Political Culture in Britain and Ireland: From the
Glorious Revolution to the Decline of Empire (Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge, 1996), p. 145.
The Ideology of Anti-Catholicism in North East England 11
the Victorian population. These studies include Victorian anti-Catholic

ideology as an essentially reactionary phenomenon (Best, Norman); or as
a form of prejudice (Wallis, Sidenvall); or through psychological
interpretations of Protestant identity and the Catholic 'Other' in Victorian
art and literature (Wheeler, Griffin).4 This opening chapter will examine
the key elements of this ideology within these varying frameworks to
argue that the North East shared many of the major tenets of anti-Catholic
ideology evident in other parts of the country. It will determine to what
extent its tenets represented a continuation of traditional anti-Catholic
ideas and how far these ideas were moulded by specific Victorian
concerns.
So what were the major tenets of anti-Catholic ideology and to what
extent were they evident in the North East of England? At its most basic
level, the broad tenets of mid-Victorian anti-Catholic thought can be
viewed as simply a continuation of the polemical conflicts of the
Reformation era, albeit coloured by a specific Victorian worldview, in
which dogmatism and misrepresentation were the defining characteristics
of debates.5 This is evident in the most fundamental of all disagreements
between Protestants and Catholics: the rule of faith. Both creeds agreed
that faith stemmed ultimately from God, but that this was transmitted in
different ways. For Protestants of all persuasions, the Scriptures were the
ultimate authority. In the North East of England, the authority of the Bible
was a particularly important issue because it enabled the wide range of
Protestant denominations that existed throughout the region to unite under
a shared “Protestant” heritage and outlook. In a local tract celebrating the
power of the Holy Scriptures, the Methodist minister, the Rev. William
Cooke, argued that the Bible was the only infallible guide. “It is”, he
added, “the instrument God employs to enlighten, to save, and to bless our
benighted and ruled world”.6 In a Newcastle meeting of the supporters of
4
G.F.A. Best, ‘Popular Protestantism in Victorian Britain’, Ideas and Institutions
in Victorian Britain: Essays in Honour of George Kitson Clark, ed. by R. Robson
(London: Bell, 1967), pp. 115-42; Edward R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in
Victorian England (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968); Frank H. Wallis, Popular
Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian Britain (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1993); E.
Sidenvall, After Anti-Catholicism: John Henry Newman and Protestant Britain,
c.1845-1890 (London: T. and T. Clark, 2005); M. Wheeler, The Old Enemies:
Catholic and Protestant in Nineteenth-Century English Culture (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006); Susan M. Griffin, Anti-Catholicism and
Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
5
Wheeler, The Old Enemies, p. xii; Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, p. 110.
6
W. Cooke, The Inspiration and Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures (London:
John Bakewell, 1846), p. 47.
12 Chapter One
the extremist anti-Catholic Evangelical organisation, the Protestant

Reformation Society, the eminent eschatologist, the Rev. Dr. John
Cumming, concurred with this view that the Bible and Protestantism were
inextricably linked. It was a belief, he argued, “that they could not let go
without lifting the very anchors of their faith and being drifted upon a boat
without compass or star and without Him to guide them”.7 In 1866, the
Durham Evangelical, the Rev. George Fox, preached on what he saw as
the crucial difference in the Protestant and Catholic perception of the Word
of God. While the Bible was central to the transmission of faith for
Protestants, the Church of Rome was not only an “unscriptural” Church
but had an “unceasing enmity to God’s Word”, denying its followers
personal access to the Bible because it was believed to be potentially
subversive:
“Under the pretext that the people cannot understand it, and are apt to
pervert it, she has robbed mankind of her noblest birthright—an open
Bible. According to her law, no one may read the Bible without priestly
permission; and she hath declared that ‘more harm than good comes of
it’”.8
This was certainly an exaggeration in Britain where an English Roman

Catholic translation of the Bible had been available since the sixteenth
century. From the Roman Catholic perspective, though, allowing the
individual the right to interpret the Bible without the guidance of the
Church was not a part of its teachings. Indeed, in a popular lecture in
Sunderland on the subject of ‘Church Authority and the Bible’ in October
1851, the Catholic priest of the town, the Rev. Philip Kearney, argued that
“to give up the Bible to the interpretation of each individual is the most
effectual plan to propagate infidelity”.9 Kearney argued that the Bible only
“becomes life to those who seek it” through the interpretation of the
Church, arguing that it was read by only a comparatively few people until
the advent of the printing press and “if Christ wished the salvation of all
through the means of the Bible only, he would surely have adopted a
system which would necessarily include the masses” before this period.10
7
Hartlepool Free Press, 2 June 1866.
8
Fox, G.T., ‘The Doctrines of the Bible Contrasted With Those of Rome’, Sermons
Preached in St. Nicholas Church, Durham (London: James Nisbett & Co., 1866),
pp. 175-6.
9
Philip Kearney, born in County Meath, Ireland, o. 1829, d. 1856. English and
Welsh Priests, 1801-1914: a working list, compiled by Charles Fitzgerald-
Lombard (Bath: Downside Abbey Trustees, 1993), p. 42.
10
Sunderland Herald, 31 October 1851.
While the Protestant claims to the authority of the Scriptures were

vulnerable in an age of criticism, the Roman Catholic rule of faith was
“based upon the Petrine rock of the Church of Rome” which interpreted
faith and doctrine through both the Bible and the concept of tradition, i.e.
that faith is prominent in those teachings of Christ not committed to
writing at the time.11 To Protestants, particularly Liberals, this emphasis on
tradition was “unscientific” and at odds with the empiricism of the
Victorian period. It was, as the Rev. George Fox stated in a further sermon,
essentially “sayings handed down by word of mouth from father to son
and from age to age”. The central role played by tradition in the Catholic
Church was vehemently attacked by the Anglican minister who saw it as
“absurd . . . to attach the least weight to the correctness, or truth, of such
flooding irresponsible statements, which may have survived the wreck of
ages, and the thick of medieval darkness”.12 Fox believed that as a result
of this emphasis on tradition, the Church of Rome had been able to
introduce a number of “superstitious” beliefs into the Catholic mind. He
argued that the practice of idolatry, in the form of worshipping saints and
images, was not only unscriptural but also explicitly forbidden in the Ten
Commandments. Fox was clearly irritated by this practice:
“Nothing can be more disgusting than to walk through the churches and
cathedrals on the Continent, and see crowds of deluded persons, bowing
down before and worshipping the images of dead men and women, who
can no more hear what they say, than the idols of the heathens. This is the
crowning iniquity of Rome”.13
The Newcastle Journal, an Anglican High Church paper with a notable

anti-Catholic stance, appeared to share the Durham clergyman’s view. It
regularly printed articles from abroad purporting to be examples of the
“gross superstitious practices” of Roman Catholics. An 1846 article
entitled “Popish Superstitions” detailed the alleged miracles that occurred
after the Chevalier Stewart’s body was temporarily placed in a coffin in
the Church of Santa Maria in Italy: The story led the paper to conclude:
“This is popery in the nineteenth century. What was it in the twelfth? The
same”.14
11
Wheeler, The Old Enemies, p. 187.
12
G.T. Fox, The Bible the Sole Rule of Faith: A Sermon Preached in St. Hilda’s
Church, South Shields on Sunday Morning, December 8th 1850 (Durham:
Andrews, 1850).
13
Fox, Doctrines, pp. 181-82.
14
Newcastle Journal, 12 September 1846.
14 Chapter One
For anti-Catholics, the most blasphemous element of this idol

worshipping was in the Roman Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary.15
Catholics saw Mary as a “universal mother” who sympathised with human
suffering; only the Pope commanded more obedience.16 In contrast,
Protestants believed that Marian devotion was sacrilegious. At a meeting
of the Evangelical Alliance in Newcastle in June 1847, the chairman of the
organisation, Sir Culling E. Eardley, caused controversy when he suggested
that an alternative version of the Lord’s Prayer, with the substitution of
“Our Father” with “Our Mother”, was being widely circulated on the
continent. This caused an angry response from Matthias Dunn, a local and
respected Newcastle Catholic, who entered into a correspondence with Sir
Culling to vehemently deny the claim. The Newcastle Journal subsequently
assisted in the publication of a tract on the dispute, the title of which is
indicative of the particular viewpoint that the local paper favoured.17 The
Newcastle paper was again at the forefront of criticism when Pope Pius
IX, published an Encyclical on the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin
Mary in 1849 (a dogma he formally defined in 1854). In commenting on a
passage from the Encyclical, the paper described it as “remarkable for its
blasphemous substitution of the Virgin Mary in the place of that of
Christ”.18 Marian devotion continued to incense anti-Catholics as it grew
in popularity from mid-century, as is evident in this extract from an 1866
sermon by Fox:
“The language which she (Church of Rome) makes her votaries address to
the Virgin Mary is blasphemous in our ears. There is hardly an attribute
belonging to the Deity that she does not ascribe to Mary. There is no
solemn worship, no adoration, no penitent confession, no cry for help,

which man can offer up to God, that she does not present to Mary”.19
The claims of the Roman Catholic Church to be an “infallible” Church

were also criticised by Protestant polemicists. The Protestant critique of
Catholic infallibility was once again due to the locus of the latter being
undefined and uncertain.20 This was a concept that again transcended the
15
John Singleton, ‘The Virgin Mary and Religious Conflict in Victorian Britain’,
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 43.1 (1992), p. 23.
16
H. McLeod, Religion and Society in England 1850-1914 (Basingstoke:
MacMillan Press, 1996), p. 45.
17
Newcastle Journal, Blasphemy, Idolatry and Superstition of the Roman Catholic
Church (Newcastle: Bell, 1847) .
18
Newcastle Journal, 24 March 1849.
19
Fox, ‘Doctrines’, p. 182.
20
Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, p. 109.
denominational divide in the North East. According to the High Church

Anglican minister and Vicar of Newcastle, the Rev. Richard Charles Coxe,
in the second of a series of popular lectures on various church subjects, the
concept of infallibility had serious implications for the nature of truth
because “as truth is one and the same at all times, she must be altered and
unalterable”.21 In another lecture on the subject, the Congregationalist, the
Rev. Samuel Goddall, suggested that the power of infallibility had been
decided by the Pope who, he argued, was “no more the successor of St
Peter than the Queen of England was the successor of Alexander the Great
or the Khan of Turkey”.22 The Darlington Anglican clergyman, the Rev.
Howell Harries, published a sermon arguing that there was no evidence in
the Bible to support this contention.23 For Catholics, however, the
infallibility of their Church was bestowed as part of God's creation. In a
defence of the doctrine of infallibility during a sold-out lecture at South
Shields, the Irish Catholic priest, the Rev. Dr. Daniel Cahill, argued that
God had created “unchangeable physical laws” in relation to the
“government of the body”. It therefore followed that he must have made
“infallible laws for the government of the soul”.24
For Protestants, the infallible authority of the Catholic Church was
epitomised in the sinister figure of the priest who appeared to hold a
distinct “apartness” from the bulk of the Catholic laity. The priesthood was
particularly abhorrent to Protestants because it reacted against a strong
English tradition of the equal relationship between clergy and laity.25 This
“apartness” was maintained by a tremendously powerful psychological
hold. Delivering a lecture on infallibility and the priesthood during a tour
of the North East in 1852, the renowned Manchester Evangelical lecturer,
the Rev. Hugh Stowell26, who was also Canon of Chester Cathedral,
argued that priestly power was reinforced through a number of different
mediums. Firstly, this can be observed in the alleged retention of the Bible.
21
R.C. Coxe, Thoughts on Important Church Subjects, Seven Lectures (Newcastle:
St. Nicholas, 1851), p. 49.
22
Durham Chronicle, 9 December 1864.
23
H. Harries, ‘The Holy Catholic Church, Out of Which None can be Saved’. A
Sermon Preached at Trinity Church, Darlington, on Sunday September 19, 1852
(Darlington: Harrison Penney, 1852), pp. 12-13.
24
Shields Gazette, 11 November 1853. For a brief biography of Daniel Cahill, see
Sheridan Gilley, ‘Cahill, Daniel William (1796–1864)’, Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
25
Best, ‘Popular Protestantism’, p. 124.
26
For a brief biography of Hugh Stowell, see John Wolffe, ‘Stowell, Hugh (1799–
1865)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
16 Chapter One
As it was only ignorance that enabled priestly power to maintain its

influence, the Bible—an essential key to knowledge—was kept from the
laity and retained by the priest. This enabled him to hold a monopoly over
religious knowledge, upon which his congregation became entirely
dependent. Secondly, the confession allowed the priest to create a culture
of dependency through luring his “subjects” into divulging their greatest
secrets and taking them into his confidence. Stowell described this system
as one that “could have only been the device of the devil to enable the
priests to enslave the people”. Thirdly, absolution of sins, the result of
confession, exalted the priest “above the Saviour of Mankind” by the
power to forgive sins. Finally, Stowell argued, the priest was able not only
to “enslave the body, but (also) the conscience of man” through making
him believe that they can “haunt him in the unseen and dark shades of
purgatory”, of which he could only be saved once the “money was heard
to tinkle in the box” through the sale of indulgences.27
It was the celebration of Mass that particularly caught the attention of
anti-Catholics.28 A pamphlet by the Anglican minister, the Rev. Robert
Taylor of Hartlepool, simply entitled ‘The Mass’, described it as a
“pantomimic representation of all Christ’s labouring and sufferings from
the commencement of the Last Supper to his death upon the cross, and his
ascension into Heaven”.29 Similarly, in a popular lecture on ‘The Sacrifice
of the Mass’, the Rev. John Sheills alleged to a Newcastle audience that
the Mass effectively “invalidated the great sacrifice that Christ made, once
for all, upon the cross”.30 Above all, it was the doctrine of transubstantiation
and the notion that Christ is corporeally present in the Eucharist which
particularly horrified many Protestants. The Rev. Samuel Dunn, in a tract
entitled “An Exposure of the Mummeries, Absurdities and Idolatries of

Popery”, saw the consumption of the Body of Christ as cannibalism
because the Catholics believed that the disciples ate the body of Jesus,
including the “blood, bones, sinews etc.” Given this absurdity, Dunn
argued, “should a mouse devour a consecrated wafer, it would really eat
the body of Christ”.31 The Rev. Mr. Taylor went further in suggesting that
the circular shape of the wafer presented to the communicant was, in fact,
an old pagan symbol representing “Satan’s cypher (sic)”.32 For Roman
27
Newcastle Courant, 5 March 1852.
28
Wallis, Popular Anti-Catholicism, p. 23.
29
Extract quoted in Newcastle Journal, 18 September 1847.
30
Durham Advertiser, 5 December 1862.
31
Samuel Dunn, An Exposure of the Mummeries, Absurdities and Idolatries of
Popery (Newcastle: Blackwell & Co., 1846), pp. 2-3.
32
Newcastle Journal, 18 September 1847.
Catholics, though, transubstantiation was a doctrine that was closely

linked with their individual and communal Catholic identity. In a lecture in
Sunderland in December 1851, the Rev. Mr. Kearney acknowledged that
the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist was a mystery calculated to
defy understanding, but he countered the Church's critics by arguing: “was
not the Trinity a mystery? The Incarnation a mystery?—a God in a
manger! A God under the carpenter’s roof! A God mocked by the Jews,
and dying on Cavalry!”33
The ideology of anti-sacerdotalism (hatred of priests) was also linked
to a further popular topic in the anti-Catholic imagination: the role of the
nun and the convent. An examination of the appeal sent to the local press
during the anti-convent campaigns of the 1850s reveals that this tenet of
anti-Catholic thought worked on a number of different levels. To begin
with, there was a genuine fear that nuns were physically imprisoned in
convents against their own will. “If the inhabitants remain there willingly”,
cried the appeal, “why are they shut in with high walls and iron bars”.
Certainly there was a belief that the convents themselves gave the physical
appearance of a prison or “dungeons which the light of day cannot
penetrate”. This reference to the convents as dungeons implies a torture
chamber analogy, linked in the idea of the Inquisition and persecution,
which were allegedly staples of Roman Catholic justice. The nuns were
not merely trapped physically, but also psychologically. It was believed
that females were “allured” into nunneries under a trance-like “dream of
blessedness”, only to discover too late the “fearful reality of desolation”.
Convents also played on Victorian obsessions with the patriarchal family
model. In particular, it has been argued that convents represented a real
threat to the Protestant ideal of womanhood which was reflected in the

attempted replication of the family model in the convent.34 The Appeal
therefore, was directed towards mothers and their inability to protect their
daughters once they were “allured” into these nunneries—“How can she
(the mother) bear to think that the voice which once gladdened her fireside
may cry for help, where the only reply shall be the echo of the dismal
vault”. Behind this, lies the popular Jesuitical anti-Catholic stereotype of
the Roman Catholic system working its way secretly into the very heart of
the Victorian family—“Rome’s emissaries . . . may be acting unseen in the
33
Sunderland Herald, 12 December 1851.
34
This is reflected in the use of the term ‘Mother’ and ‘Sister’. S. O’Brien, ‘Terra
Incognita: The Nuns in Nineteenth Century England’, Past and Present, 121
(1988), p. 136; S.P. Casteras, ‘Virgin Vows: The Early Victorian Portrayal of Nuns
and Novices', Religion in the Lives of English Women, ed. by Gail Malmgreen
(1986), p. 137.
18 Chapter One
most happy families, to convert them into scenes of weeping and

disorder”.35
The sexual mores of priests and nuns were favourite topics of the more
vulgar aspects of popular anti-Catholicism. As D. Peschier has argued,
convents “were regarded as the locus for all kinds of perversions, sexual
perversions in particular”.36 Celibacy and chastity were particularly
repugnant to anti-Catholics who believed them to have immoral
consequences.37 From the 1830s, stories of sexual misdemeanour in
“confessional and convent” sprang up in response to a growing market for
such works. Ingram suggests that the longevity of the convent question
and the recurring popularity of priests and nuns in pornographic print lay
in the fact that “Protestant society from top to bottom . . . was deeply
harassed by the idea of the Catholic priest as a sexual threat to all
women”.38 These ideas were no better expressed than in The Confessional
Unmasked, a tract that formed the basis of the lectures of No Popery
demagogues such as Patrick Flynn and William Murphy, who both toured
the North East in the late 1860s.39 The Confessional Unmasked was
allegedly based on a manual for Catholic priests on how to deal with taboo
subjects in the confessional and is symptomatic of the Protestant obsession
with priestly sexuality. The priest is required to interrogate his penitent
who he feels may have committed the sin of adultery as this extract shows:
“If the penitent be a girl, let her be asked—Has she ornamented herself in
dress so as to please the male sex?, or for the same end, has she painted
herself; or bared her arms, her shoulders, or her bosom?”40
35
Newcastle Journal, 24 January 1852.
36
D. Peschier, ‘Religious Sexual Perversion in Nineteenth-Century Anti-Catholic
Literature’, Sexual Perversions, 1670-1890, ed. by J. Peakmen (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 202.
37
Wallis, Popular Anti-Catholicism, p. 24; C.M. Mangion, Contested identities:
Catholic women religious in nineteenth century England and Wales (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2008), p. 56.
38
P. Ingram, ‘Protestant Patriarchy and the Catholic Priesthood in Nineteenth-
Century England’, Journal of Social History, 24.4 (1991), pp. 783, 785.
39
40
[B.C.]., The Confessional Unmasked Showing the Depravity of the Priesthood,
Questions Put to Females in Confession, Perjury and Stealing Commanded and
Encouraged etc. Being Extracts from the Theological Works of Saint Alphonso M.
De. Liguori, Peter Dens, Bailly, Delahogue, and Cabassutius (London: Johnston,
1851),
p. 40.
The quote above is mild in comparison to the second half of the tract,
which deals with subjects such as coitus interruptus, masturbation,
ejaculation and impotence and the various scenarios in which they can be
categorised as a sin are discussed in lurid detail. This obsession with the
sexual activity of his penitents was derived from the priest’s forced vow of
celibacy, which was not only “unnatural” but could lead to the priest
becoming a “super-virile seducer and rapist”.41
Anti-Catholicism was more than just prurient pornography or
theological polemic to the Victorian Protestant. K. Kumar has suggested
that anti-Catholicism survived into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
primarily because of its political and cultural associations.42 Certainly in
the Victorian period, Protestantism and anti-Catholicism were fundamental
facets of English national identity as Britain’s industrial greatness became
inextricably linked to her religion. According to Denis Paz, this perception
was closely connected to the idea of Providentialism—Britain had been
chosen to carry out God’s will. In return, for its evangelical work, it
enjoyed superior political and economic status.43 This idea of Providentialism
certainly influenced the views of the Scottish anti-Catholic journal, the
Bulwark:
“To her religion, under God’s blessing, Britain is principally indebted. But
God never works without a purpose, and He would not have given her so
much power and influence had she no mission to accomplish. Like the
Jews of old, Britain has been chosen as a repository of God’s word. She is
almost the only light in the midst of surrounding darkness”.44
The link between British nationalism and Protestantism was also

evident at the local level. The editor of the Newcastle Journal saw his
native country as “the parent of modern industry, enterprise, improved
arts . . . and in one word-civilisation”, of which her religion played a
crucial role.45 According to the Rev. T. Pottinger, in a local sermon entitled
‘The Bible is the Glory of Our Land’, the source of Britain’s greatness was
in her morality and religious devotion, developed through reading and
following the Word of God:
41
Ingram, 'Protestant Patriarchy', p. 790.
42
K. Kumar, The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993), p. 165.
43
Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism, p. 3.
44
Bulwark, 1 December 1859, p. 148.
45
Newcastle Journal, 18 October 1850.
20 Chapter One
“In proportion as the people of this country love and revere the Bible they
reap the benefits of a moral and religious training . . . secular education
may make men scholars, citizens, merchants, senators, but it overlooks the
Christian which is the highest state of man. The Bible claims authority to
stamp its own beautiful image upon the education of all classes amongst
us . . . Such a training would be the best guarantee for peace, order, liberty,
justice, good-will, and national prosperity”.46
The effects of a return to Popery would, it was believed, be disastrous

for the country as a whole. For many who shared these views, it was not
merely a matter of opinion. This could be “proved” both geographically
and historically. Of the former, they only needed to look to the Catholic
countries of Europe to see the material effects of the “Popish” religion.47
The usually tolerant Newcastle alderman, Sir John Fife, saw no contradiction
in his attitude when he spoke at the Newcastle meeting for the liberation of
the Protestant Madiai family in Tuscany (see Chapter Four). “The working
man in Roman Catholic countries”, he argued, “was badly fed, badly
clothed, badly lodged, broken in spirit and degraded by the habit of
kneeling to his fellow-men (hear, hear) and transplanted to the earth by the
cloven foot of tyranny”. 48 The people of Catholic countries, it was
believed, lived in a climate of fear and oppression that was symptomatic of
their religion. “Religious and Civil Liberty” may have been a rather
overworked phrase in the nineteenth century49, but for many it was
undeniably the main benchmark that divided Protestant and Catholic
countries. Thus, the Italian evangelist lecturer Alessandro Gavazzi, in his
popular lectures in the North East, argued that his native country had
“neither liberty of thought, liberty of action, liberty of meeting, nor liberty
46
T. Pottinger, The Bible is the Glory of Our Land: The Substance of a Sermon
Delivered in Tulhill Stairs Chapel, Newcastle, on November 15th 1849 (Newcastle:
[n. pub.] 1849).
47
The eminent sociologist Max Weber argued that Protestant countries were at the
forefront of industry and culture because Protestants had a ‘work ethic’ which
Catholics lacked. M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
(London: Unwin, 1930). In the North East, however, the central role played by
Catholic families in local industrial development is an effective rejoinder to this
argument. See Leo Gooch, ‘Papists and Profits: The Catholics (Silvertop,
Brandling and Salvin Familes) of Durham and Industrial Development’, Durham
County Local History Society Bulletin, 42 (1989), which is based on his MA thesis,
‘The Durham Catholics and Industrial Development, 1560-1850’, (unpublished
master’s thesis, University of York, 1984).
48
Newcastle Guardian, 19 March 1853.
49
W.G. Addison, Religious Equality in Modern England (London: SPCK, 1944), p.
5.
of conversation”.50 The Rev. J.A. Wylie concurred with this viewpoint in a

lecture to the Protestant Alliance. Indeed, Wylie believed there was “far
more toleration of the Christians in Pagan times than was in the case in
Papal Rome”.51
Ireland was a particularly special case in this respect. Hugh McLeod
has suggested that for nineteenth century British Protestants, “the supreme
embodiment of the Catholic Other was not France but Ireland”.52 This
negative perception was cultivated by a mainland image of the Irish as
lagging behind their “Saxon” contemporaries in mental capacity.53 A letter
writer to the Newcastle Journal suggested that this was reflected in the
role of the Irish immigrant in his new society:
“You do not find near Newcastle that Irishmen rise to any station or
influence in society, generally they are not proficient in any sort of science,
not teachers of music, or drawing, or languages, not employed in superior
offices in trade, manufacture, gardening, or engineering . . . the Irishman
ends as he began, a day labourer, devoid of skill and knowledge, and even
of manual dexterity”.54
The link between the degrading effects of the Catholic religion and the
“subhuman” Irish mindset was not always made clear by contemporaries.
The contemporary historian and Whig politician, T.B. Macaulay, certainly
thought that English and Irish animosity arose from religious, rather than
racial differences55 and there were attempts by some local commentators
to link Catholicism and Irish degradation with Ireland itself. During the
Irish Rebellion of 1848, the Liberal Durham Chronicle believed that
50
Newcastle Journal, 18 October 1851. For Gavazzi’s life, see B. Aspinwall, ‘Rev.
Alessandro Gavazzi and Scottish Identity: A Chapter in Nineteenth Century Anti-
Catholicism’, Recusant History, 28.1 (2006), pp. 129-52; and B. Hall, ‘Alessandro
Gavazzi: A Barnabite Friar and the Risorgimento’, Studies in Church History, 12
(1975), pp. 303-56.
51
Newcastle Journal, 30 October 1852.
52
Hugh McLeod, ‘Protestantism and British National Identity, 1815-1945’, Nation
and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, ed. by Hartmut Lehmann
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 47.
53
L.P. Curtis, Anglo-Saxons and Celts: A Study of Anti-Irish Prejudice in Victorian
England (Bridgeport: University of Bridgeport, 1968), p. 64.
54
Newcastle Journal, 14 June 1848.
55
Hickman, Religion, Class and Identity, p. 51. The debate on whether anti-Irish
prejudice constituted a form of racism is also propounded by Hickman. See also,
Sheridan Gilley, ‘English Attitudes to the Irish in England, 1780-1900’,
Immigrants and Minorities in British Society, ed. by C. Holmes (London: Allen
and Unwin, 1978), pp. 81-110; and Curtis, Anglo-Saxons and Celts.
22 Chapter One
Ireland’s woes rested in the Catholic priests “who seem to have become
rather a curse than a blessing, forgetting alike their duty to God and the
responsibility of that sovereignty which they hold over men”.56 The
Liberal Sunderland News reflected on the relative tranquillity of Ireland in
1852, believing it to be based on the increase in Protestantism in the
country. This, the paper argued, was evident in the “greater energy, self-
reliance and independence” to which the Protestant religion “generates
wherever it prevails”.57 The Newcastle Journal also grabbed the opportunity
to attack the present state of Ireland itself, and agreeing with Admiral Sir
Joseph Yorke, that “it would be to the exceeding benefits of society . . .
that Ireland should be let into the sea for some 24 hours”.58 Evangelicals
believed that the conversion of Ireland and the Irish Catholics to
Protestantism provided the only means of escape from their spiritual and
material destitution.59 Not every commentator concurred with the view
that the “misery” of Ireland could be blamed solely on the Catholic
religion. Indeed, the Liberal Gateshead Observer described this theory as
“sheer nonsense”, quoting Belgium as an example of a prosperous
Catholic country where “Catholics (lay and clerical) are as rife as
Ireland”.60
This perception of Catholic countries as harbingers of despotism and
the antithesis of liberty was vehemently denied by the Roman Catholics. In
a speech during a Roman Catholic festival in Sunderland in 1851, the Rev.
Philip Kearney was again active in denying the stereotype of the Catholic
poor as “miserable” and “wretched”:
“Don’t believe those who say this. I have been abroad for eleven years and
I can tell you that the poor people in other (Catholic) countries are happier
and more comfortable than the poor people in England. They are better
educated, there are no reasoners among them, no infidels who go on in
mathematics till they deny the existence of the supreme being. They are
good and simple beings . . .”61
The consequences of Popery could also be shown by referring to the

course of history. This was a particularly favoured tactic of anti-Catholic
lecturers, who employed what Herbert Butterfield was later to term, the
56
Durham Chronicle, 4 February 1848.
57
Sunderland News, 18 September 1852.
58
Newcastle Journal, 7 June 1851.
59
60
Gateshead Observer, 22 January 1849.
61
Sunderland Herald, 28 November 1851.
“Whig Interpretation of History”. This was a positive underlying narrative

to history writing, charting what was believed to be a “certain form upon
the whole historical story, and to produce a scheme of general history
which is bound to converge beautifully upon the present—all demonstrating
throughout the ages the workings of an obvious principle of progress”.62
The style was made popular by T.B. Macaulay’s History of England series
(1848-59), which was enormously influential in forming the Victorian
perception of its past.63 From this perspective, many popular anti-Catholic
lecturers saw the development of Protestantism as “an obvious principle of
progress”. As society developed, Protestantism would eventually eradicate
Catholicism. An example of this form of historical determinism can be
seen in a report of a public lecture at the Wesleyan Chapel in Fawcett
Street, Sunderland, on the ‘Perils of Protestantism’. Here the Wesleyan
minister, the Rev. George Sergeant, had a clear perspective on the
direction history was proceeding in:
“In an interesting sketch he (Sergeant) traced the rise of Protestantism from

the teachings of Wycliffe in the 14th century, through the next century until
the reign of Henry the Eighth, through that of Mary to Elizabeth, and the
final ascendancy of the Protestant faith, pointing out the dangers it had
gone through”.64
Lectures were also delivered on specific historical events which included

such favoured anti-Catholic signifiers as the ‘English Reformation’65 and
the ‘Martyrs of Smithfield’.66 These helped to fashion a narrative of
history into which Protestants and Catholics were heroes and villains
respectively. Wolffe has noted that mid-Victorian Evangelicals generally

acquired their knowledge and their sense of Protestant history from the
same sources. These included Joseph and Isaac Milner's History of the
Church of Christ (published in the 1790s) and J.H. Merle d'Aubigne's
Historie de la Reformation (published in Geneva in 1835 and translated
into English three years later).67 Nevertheless, it was a history which many
anti-Catholics believed had contemporary validity, particularly as
sixteenth-century anti-Catholic works such as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs,
62
H. Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: G. Bell and Sons,
1931), p. 12.
63
Wheeler, The Old Enemies, p. 96.
64
Sunderland News, 3 April 1869.
65
Shields Daily News, 24 April 1865.
66
Durham Advertiser, 10 December 1869.
67
24 Chapter One
were continually reprinted for a new audience in the Victorian period.68

This created an anti-Catholic worldview which was deeply connected to
past conflict and thus explains the intensity and urgency of anti-Catholic
polemical thought throughout the Victorian period.69
The anti-Catholic historical worldview was not only a purely selective
interpretation of history, but it was one in which Catholics found little
difficulty in pulling apart at every opportunity. However, Catholics
themselves similarly employed a teleological model of historical
interpretation when defending their religion against Protestant attacks. The
Catholic Rev. Dr. Henry Marshall, in a lecture in Durham, attacked the
anti-Catholic notion that the Catholic Church was against the concepts of
civilisation and liberty.70 Indeed, he argued, the very mission of the
Church throughout history has been one of civilisation by laying down the
principles of common and civil law and bringing “those rights and
privileges which have proved our noblest boast, and which are the
palladium of our liberties”.71 The Reformation was, of course, abhorred by
Catholics so for many it was the pre-Reformation period which constituted
a golden age. According to the Catholic orator Charles Larkin, “there
never was a time when there was so much gold, silver, and every possible
species of furniture, so many rich men, so much contentment, and so much
wealth in England, as there was immediately preceding the Reformation”.
For Larkin, the legacy of the Reformation was one of only “bitterness and
misery”.72 A letter writer to the Newcastle Journal in 1862 appeared to
concur with Larkin. He complained of a recent anti-Catholic lecture by an
Anglican layman, a Mr. Addison, in Durham, wherein the orator saw the
Reformation as a triumph of liberty:
“Let him (Addison) study the character of Luther, the lewd and discarded
priest, who trampled upon his own solemn vows, whilst he seduced a poor
unfortunate nun. Let him scan the character of Queen Elizabeth, who
murdered her cousin Mary. Let him peruse the base and bloody pages of
the penal laws against Papists during three successive centuries”.73
68
Norman, The English Catholic Church, p. 18; Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, p.
112.
69
70
Henry Johnson Marshall, b. 1818 (Somerset), o. 1848, d. 1875. English and
Welsh Priests, p. 129.
71
Durham Advertiser, 17 March 1865.
72
Newcastle Guardian, 9 May 1857.
73
Newcastle Daily Journal, 31 October 1862.
The historical determinism associated with the rise of Protestantism

was not a single unifying interpretation of the past but a contested area that
brought together different anti-Catholic meta-narratives, although they
were not mutually exclusive and often overlapped. An example of this is
evident in readings of historical development following the Glorious
Revolution of 1688.74 This rested on the belief that the Protestant King of
Holland, William of Orange, had guarded English civil and religious
liberties by winning the Battle of the Boyne against the Catholic James II.
It was at this stage that the “Protestant Constitution” of Great Britain was
first promulgated, enshrining these liberties in the legislature of the
country and, according to one historian, helping to formulate the
“invention of Great Britain and its identity as a Protestant nation”.75
Throughout the nineteenth century, some contemporary commentators
believed that the Protestant elements of the constitution were gradually
being eroded by concessionary legislation towards Roman Catholics. This
had begun with the Catholic Relief Acts of 1778, 1791 and 1829 but
continued with the increase in the Maynooth Grant, Irish Disestablishment
and a host of other laws that seemed to favour Catholics. This “truckling to
Popery” was abhorrent and undermined the very nature of Church and
State. These militant Protestants saw it as their duty to protest against any
measure which afforded greater rights to their religious adversaries.
Edward Norman has suggested that the No Popery movement associated
with the “Protestant Constitution” was essentially a dying theory in the
nineteenth century, although it still retained some validity, mostly among
Conservatives and Anglicans and some Liberal-Dissenters (from a non-
Establishment standpoint).76
An alternative anti-Catholic narrative of history and, as we shall see, a

particular popular one on Tyneside, also took the Glorious Revolution as
its starting point, although it placed less emphasis on defending what it
perceived to be a backward theory of the “Protestant Constitution”.
Indeed, it suggested that the legacy of the Revolution was in the
foundation of “civil and religious liberty”, in which toleration was the key
74
The Protestant Constitution played a large role in the ideology behind the
opposition to the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829, see G.F.A. Best, ‘The
Protestant Constitution and its Supporters, 1820-29’, Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society, 8 (1958), pp. 105-27.
75
J. Epstein, “‘Our Real Constitution”: Trial Defence and Radical Memory in the
Age of Revolution’, Re-Reading the Constitution: New Narratives in the Political
History of the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. by J. Vernon (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), p. 43.
76
Norman, Anti-Catholicism, p. 21.
26 Chapter One
element of government.77 This anti-Catholic ideology was closely aligned

with the development of Liberalism which gradually became accepted into
the political mainstream from the 1830s onwards, as well as the growing
influence of Dissenters following the repeal of the Test and Corporation
Acts. “Liberal” anti-Catholicism departed significantly from the
traditionalists in perceiving the No Popery movement of old as the very
antithesis of progress and toleration. The No Popery movement was also
accused of “disgusting hypocrisy” by the Eclectic Review (a Radical
Dissenter journal) because of its associations with the interests of the Tory
party and the defence of the Established Church.78 Liberal Dissenting anti-
Catholics were happy to concede basic human rights to Roman Catholics
within reason because they shared a similar history of persecution. In a
popular lecture on the Reformation and its consequences in Newcastle by
the notable Liberal Dissenter, Henry Vincent, in 1856, raised the thorny
issue of the Acts of Uniformity which “enacted severe persecutions against
the Dissenters from the Established Church”.79 Nevertheless, they were
still keen to stress their role in the creation of a national identity based on
the Protestant religion.80
Liberal anti-Catholicism was instead expressed in a more abstract
form, presenting Roman Catholicism as a tyrannical and despotic religion
that was ultimately opposed to liberty. Indeed, most Liberals were
involved in various campaigns which played on fears of persecution in the
Catholic system (the anti-convent campaign, the release of the Madiai) or
the “despotic” political institutions of Catholic countries (Italian
independence).81 They saw Roman Catholicism as a persecuting and
backward religion whose ideas and institutions would inevitably be
stamped out by the march of progress of the human mind, in which the
Bible played a large part in liberating the minds of those who experienced
77
Bertrand Russell has noted that the theoretical and practical foundations of
Victorian toleration were laid down at the end of the seventeenth century by
William III who brought the practice over from Holland and John Locke’s treatise
on toleration. B. Russell, ‘Toleration’, Ideas and Beliefs of the Victorians: An
Historic Revaluation of the Victorian Age, compiled by the British Broadcasting
Corporation (London: Sylvan Press, 1949), p. 270.
78
79
80
Simon Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class: Ritual and
Authority and the English Industrial City (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2000), p. 123.
81
The latter was clearly influenced by Edward Burke's theory on the balance between
arbitrary government and anarchy. E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France,
ed. by J.C.D. Clark (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).
“priestly tyranny”. This paradigm of “progress” was associated with the

Protestant religion as the ultimate example of freedom.
The Liberal form of anti-Catholicism highlighted the importance of
toleration towards Roman Catholics which was central to Victorian
philosophy. While the system of Popery was to be feared, those
individuals who practised the Catholic religion should be allowed the
liberty to do so without fear of discrimination. Somewhat ironically,
therefore, an essential facet of moderate anti-Catholic ideology was
toleration for individual Catholics to practice their religion as they pleased.
This was closely linked with the ideas of John Stuart Mill, who believed
that all individuals had the right of freedom of action and belief, so long as
they did not encroach on the rights of others.82 This was often contrasted
with Catholic countries in which Protestants did not receive the same level
of toleration. While it was perfectly acceptable to criticise the Catholic
religion as a system, the idea of persecution of the ordinary Catholic was
abhorrent to all but the most extreme anti-Catholics.
This concept of toleration also extended to anti-Catholic gatherings
where the speakers of popular meetings and lectures always seemed to be
“at great pains to avoid offending their Roman Catholic fellow subjects”.
Indeed, virtually all anti-Catholic gatherings paid lip-service to toleration
in this sense, a caveat which allowed them to launch subsequently into an
aggressive attack on the Roman Catholic system itself. Thus, the Chairman
of the Papal Aggression meeting in Newcastle in 1850 wished to speak of
the Roman Catholics with the “greatest respect”, while a speaker, Ralph
Walters, hoped that the Roman Catholics would be encouraged to speak at
the meeting for which they would undoubtedly have “a fair and proper
hearing”.83 Even the medical practitioner, Dr. William Sleigh, who toured
the region in 1851 and was notorious for his vitriolic denunciations of
Roman Catholicism, hoped that his lectures would not offend the Roman
Catholics themselves. His lectures, he argued, would not “violate or . . .
caricature the Catholic religion” and therefore ordinary Catholics need not
be angered by his orations:
“His Catholic-fellow countrymen would, therefore, he hoped, look upon

him as their friend, as no man could be more friendly to civil and religious
liberty than himself, and he not only abhorred persecution, but denounced
82
J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism, On Liberty, and Considerations on Representative
Government (London: J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd, 1972), p. 136.
83
Newcastle Courant, 29 November 1850.
28 Chapter One
it as wholly impolite and directly opposed to the fundamental principles of

genuine Christianity. Nor did he stand there to attack men, but principles”.84
Roman Catholics were perceived as simply the passive and unfortunate

victims of a corrupt and evil system. In an anti-Catholic tract on the
priesthood, the Rev. James Crozer blamed the priests for the exploitation
of their flock:
“It is very singular that the Roman Catholic laity, who are as rational in all
respects as others, and are naturally as good civil neighbours also, should
be so changed when their religion interferes, and should suffer themselves
to outrage their own good feelings at the notoriously selfish instigation of
their designatory priesthood; for they know, from fatal experience, that
they will take the last farthing they have from them, and leave themselves
and families to starve for all that they care”.85
The Catholic and ultramontane Tablet was evidently unconvinced by this

seemingly contradictory Protestant idea of toleration. The paper printed an
article on a speech made by Joseph Pease, a Darlington Quaker whose
family had a long tradition of good social relations with local Catholics.86
Pease spoke of his experiences in a recent visit to the cathedral in Lyon.
This allowed him the opportunity to condemn the peculiar characteristics
of the Roman Catholic system while defending the rights of Roman
Catholic individuals to worship as they pleased. The paper described his
speech as “an excellent specimen of the strange medley of opinions by a
man who is evidently disposed to be good-natured and kind towards the
faith of his Catholic neighbours; struggling to be liberal yet still bound in
the chains of prejudice”.87

There is evidence, however, that more extreme anti-Catholics did not
even try to shake off the “chains of prejudice”, refusing to consent to any
idea of toleration towards Roman Catholics. This was a view shared
amongst some militant Protestants in the North East of England. In 1851,
the opposition of Catholics towards the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill gave rise
to suspicion for many Protestants. The Newcastle Journal claimed the
Catholics had “deliberately and boastfully broken their oath of 1829, an
oath which the paper referred to as the “putting of Papists . . . on their
84
Newcastle Guardian, 7 October 1851.
85
J. Crozer, A Glimpse of all the Denominations of the Priesthood... (Newcastle:
W.B. Leighton, 1845), p. 35.
86
For a general history of the Pease family, see Orde, Religion, Business and
Society.
87
Tablet, 8 July 1852.
good behaviour”.88 As a member of the Protestant Alliance, the Newcastle

Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Thomas Duncan, spoke of the Roman
Catholics in far harsher terms to a meeting of the organisation. He
believed they had been “found wanting”. “It was only fair”, he asserted,
that “the large concessions formally made to them should be recalled”.89
This view outlasted the Papal Aggression agitation and there is evidence to
suggest that it was still in vogue well into the 1860s. In September 1865, a
letter writer to the Sunderland Herald, a Liberal newspaper normally
sympathetic to Catholics, blamed the 1829 Roman Catholic Relief Act for
conceding too many rights to Catholics:
“There is an old proverb, ‘Give the mouse a hole and she will become your
heir’, which is alarmingly verified by the present progress and impudence
of Popery in this realm. The Emancipation Act of 1829 gave this mouse a
hospitable hole in the dwelling of old England, and ever since then the
cunning creature has been growing more and more bold, till now, in 1865,
she has abandoned possession of the hole and taken possession of the
room”.90
Towards the end of the 1860s, however, there is also evidence to

suggest that a more tolerant attitude was taking hold. Even the
Conservative press were moderating their opinions. After a warmly written
article on the laying of the foundation stone of a Roman Catholic chapel at
Tudhoe in 1869, the Anglican High Church Durham Advertiser received
strong criticism from a letter-writer who believed that it had betrayed its
political and religious principles:
“The Durham Advertiser used to be looked upon as the representative of

Conservatism in politics, and of the Church of England, which, let me
remind you, is a Protestant Church, in religion. In common with many
others, I am sorry to have observed for some time past that it has ceased to
be so, and that no interests are so warmly received by you as those of
Rome”.91
A recent book by E. Sidenvall has criticised the accepted “Liberal

‘master narrative’” that perceives the history of religious freedom in the
Western world as one of “progress” towards a growing toleration of other
faiths. Instead he suggests that attitudes towards the Catholic religion in
88
Newcastle Journal, 6 December 1851.
89
Newcastle Journal, 10 December 1851.
90
Sunderland Herald, 15 September 1865.
91
Durham Advertiser, 18 June 1869.
30 Chapter One
the nineteenth century included both sentiments of growing toleration and

traditional prejudice which came to live side by side with each other.92 The
examples above from the Durham Advertiser and the Sunderland Herald
suggest that these two competing discourses are evident in the regional
setting.
Sidenvall's ideas, as well as F. Wallis's theory that the Protestant
perception of Catholicism was ultimately based on prejudice, are also
apparent in the language adopted by the anti-Catholics towards Roman
Catholics.93 An examination of the terms “Romanism”/”Popery” and
“Romanist”/”Papist”, and the context in which they are employed, may
help to support this. These terms were in common usage amongst
Protestants during the eighteenth century but were gradually dying out by
the mid-Victorian period. Nevertheless, they were still being used in
certain sections of the mainstream press and were deeply offensive to
Catholics. In an article in August 1851, the Bulwark set out to discuss why
these labels were used. The paper argued that Catholics were incorrect in
using the term “Catholic” because it conveyed “the doctrine that they and
they alone are members of the true Church of Christ”. Thus, the paper
argued, Protestants should not use the term Catholic:
“Papists then insult and injure us when they assume to themselves, and
refuse to us, the designation of Catholics; and when we call them
Catholics, we unthinkingly approve of the insult and the injury which they
inflict upon us, and concede the validity of the claims on which the
treatment of us is based”.
As for the use of the terms “Romanist” and “Papist”, the paper stressed
that it did not do so to “represent these designations as nicknames, and . . .
to insult or wound the feelings of those to whom we apply them. The
terms imply what they are: subject to Rome (Romanist) and subject to the
authority of the Pope (Papist)”.94 It is important to note, however, that
these terms are only used when spoken in a negative context. In an
editorial shortly after the announcement of the Restoration of the
Hierarchy, the Newcastle Journal could barely conceal its anti-Catholicism,
arguing that “the Romanists were designedly kept very far behind
Protestants in mental cultivation”. When speaking of them in one of its
92
Sidenvall, After Anti-Catholicism, pp. 2-3.
93
Wallis, Popular Anti-Catholicism, p. 11. For a discussion on prejudicial
labelling, see G.W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
The Beacon Press, 1954), pp. 50, 181.
94
Bulwark, August 1851.
rare moments of toleration, however, the term “Roman Catholic” is used—

“We regard Roman Catholics as brothers”.95 This clearly confirms both the
theories of Sidenvall and Wallis in the local setting.
While toleration towards Roman Catholics was a key component of
Victorian philosophy, for many anti-Catholics there were also real dangers
in encouraging the spread of Popery. According to F. Wallis, Protestants
perceived Popery as a “vast spiritual and temporal conspiracy against
liberty and lawful authority, whose goal was dominion over all
Christians”.96 Though the Catholic religion might be weak, it was certainly
expanding and a complacency and lack of activity on the part of
Protestants would only result in the former gaining strength and usurping
the strong position held by the latter. Apocalyptic scenarios promoted by
influential Evangelicals, such as Dr. John Cumming, aligned their anti-
Catholicism with prophetic and millenarian conceptions of the Second
Coming.97 W.H. Oliver believed that these ideas declined in importance
after the 1840s but there is evidence in the local context to suggest
otherwise. Indeed, the Rev. George Fox still believed that Popery was on
the march in the late 1860s:
“There never was a period when the nation required more to be warned on
this head than the present, for the experience of the past seems to be
rapidly passing into oblivion, and those bulwarks which the wisdom of our
forefathers caused them to erect for the protection of the nation, are with
unwise haste being dismantled, exposing us year by year to the assaults of
the enemy, which hath ever produced itself alike unfriendly to civil and
religious liberty”.98
The Rev. George Sergeant argued that this was part of the aggrandizing
spirit of Popery, where she could be “found in every region where
95
Newcastle Journal, 25 October 1851; 10 December 1850.
96
Wallis, Popular Anti-Catholicism, p. 22.
97
For the role of Cumming and eschatological thought, see D. Hempton,
‘Evangelicalism and Eschatology’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 31.2 (1980),
pp. 179-90; and R.H. Ellison and C.M. Engelhardt, ‘Prophecy and Anti-Popery in
Victorian London: John Cumming Reconsidered’, Victorian Literature and
Culture, 31.1 (2003), pp. 373-89. For a general discussion on millenarianism, see
W.H. Oliver, Prophets and Millenarianists: The Use of Biblical Prophecy in
England from the 1790s to the 1840s (Auckland University Press: Auckland,
1978); and for its social and economic impact: Boyd Hilton, The Age of
Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought,
1785-1865 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
98
Fox, ‘Doctrines’, p. 174.
32 Chapter One
Protestantism resides, seeking in every way to advance her power over that
of Protestantism”.99 In his tract on the priesthood, the Rev. James Crozer
warned that the priests “will not be satisfied until they can grasp universal
power and . . . send the whole into eternity in fiery chariots, or in vast
rivers of blood”.100 For some, the rise of Roman Catholicism in the mid-
Victorian period was predicted in the Bible. The Rev. John Sheils of
Durham, in a British Reformation Society lecture in Newcastle, drew
parallels with biblical references from the seventh chapter of Daniel,
comparing the Pope to the “Man of Sin” and the Romish Church as the
“False Apostasy”.101 Not everyone was willing to concur with these views
however. The Durham Advertiser saw the “ascendancy of Popery in this
country” as “either the dream of an exaggerated fear or the illusory
anticipation over its linguine professors”.102
Anti-Catholicism was, to a large extent, mirrored in the Evangelical
and Dissenter attitude towards the Tractarian clergy. It has been asserted
that the Church of England was declining in importance during the
nineteenth century. Its inability to cope with the pressures of industrialisation
to which the various Dissenting organisations were clearly more adaptable,
coupled with the growing strength of the Catholic Church, led some High
Churchmen to believe that the Anglican Church could return to its catholic
roots.103 Many wished to see the Church of England return to its former
status, authority and power by re-adopting its “former conservative,
traditional values in determined opposition to the blatant corrosive tones of
Radicalism and Liberalism in their various guises”.104 It was suggested by
the Tractarians that the Church of England was not a Protestant Church but
possessed continuity with the Church of the Middle Ages. England was
therefore not a Protestant country, but had shared catholic roots, traditions
and identity.105 This had serious implications for the theory of the
confessional State and the very foundation of “Protestant” England. It is
99
Sunderland News, 3 April 1869.
100
Crozer, A glimpse of all the denominations, p. 35.
101
Newcastle Guardian, 1 November 1862.
102
Durham Advertiser, 3 January 1851.
103
Gilley, ‘The Church of England’, p. 292. See also G. Parsons, ‘A Question of
Meaning: Religion and Working-Class Life’, Religion in Victorian Britain, II, pp.
63-87.
104
K. Hylson-Smith, High Churchmanship in the Church of England From the
Sixteenth Century to the Late Twentieth Century (London: T. and T. Clark, 1993),
p. 125.
105
W.S.F. Pickering, Anglo-Catholicism: A Study in Religious Ambiguity (London:
Routledge, 1989), p. 25.
no surprise, therefore, that many viewed the movement to re-introduce

traditional doctrines into the Church with the utmost suspicion. It was not
enough for the Tractarians to deal in theoretical implications; many were
also starting to introduce innovations in their churches by the late 1840s,
such as placing lighted candles on the “altar” and bowing at the name of
Jesus.
Anti-Tractarian ideology targeted those individuals who had
introduced “Popish” innovations into Anglican churches. In particular, it
was the pretensions to “priestly” authority claimed by these incumbents
which really angered commentators. Indeed, the Tractarian emphasis on
clerical authority brought a particularly unsavoury element of “Romish
priestcraft” to the Anglican rural parish, where power-hungry clergymen
could find an easy justification for imposing their will.106 The Tractarian
objective was, according to the Newcastle Guardian to “chain down
thought, to make the mind a mere instrument for the clergy to play upon,
and to dispense with that inalienable birth-right of humanity, the matter of
private judgement in all matter religious or political”.107 Paz suggests that
this was primarily a Nonconformist fear, because “Anglo-Catholic vicars
could practice what English Roman Catholics priests only dreamed of: the
persecution of Dissenters”.108 Nevertheless, there is evidence to suggest
that lay Anglican Evangelicals shared this concern. An article in the
Sunderland Herald during the Tractarian controversy in Houghton-Le-
Spring accused the “Pope of Houghton”, John Grey, as acting like “priest
supreme, disregarding alike his venerable diocesan and his parishioners”,
regrettably forcing many to attend Dissenting chapels.109 Similarly, at the
Wallsend anti-Tractarian meeting, the Anglican William Bainbridge
framed the resolutions against the incumbent, the Rev. William Armstrong,
in such a way as to play on fears of the tyranny of priesthood.110 Tractarian
clergymen were labelled “Puseyites”, a term which not only designated
their belief in following the ideas of the leading Anglo-Catholic of this
period, E.B. Pusey, but was also a term of “disapprobation and mockery,
suggesting troglodytic crankiness and unpatriotic oddity”.111 Of course, the
innovations themselves greatly concerned the parishioners and the wider
106
J.S. Reed, Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-
Catholicism (Vanderbilt University Press: Nashville, 1996), p. 32.
107
108
109
Sunderland Herald, 24 January 1851.
110
Newcastle Guardian, 21 December 1850.
111
R.W. Franklin, ‘Pusey and Worship in Industrial Society’, Worship, 57 (1953),
p. 389.
34 Chapter One
community, but it was the underlying fear that the Tractarians were
mimicking the sacerdotal element of the Roman Catholic clergy which
played primarily on the anti-Catholic mind. However, the threat posed by
Tractarians did not appear to be as pronounced in the North East where,
with the exception of the late 1840s and early 1850s, Tractarianism, and
later Ritualism, held little sway in the predominantly Evamglical and
Dissenter-dominated region.
Clearly then, the North East shared the major tenets of anti-Catholic
thought that were evident in other areas of the country. Anti-Catholicism
was not a single unified set of beliefs but an ideology that could align itself
with other tenets of Victorian philosophy which helped to explain both its
wide appeal and longevity. An examination of the ideology of anti-
Catholicism in the North East of England, however, does not reveal the
extent to which the complex interplay of these ideas helped to influence
anti-Catholic cultures in various parts of the region. Indeed, for many anti-
Catholics, actions spoke louder than words and the next chapter will seek
to examine the nature and extent of the North East's response to an anti-
Catholic event of some magnitude: the so-called “Papal Aggression”.
CHAPTER TWO
PETITIONING THE POPE:

THE RESPONSE TO THE RESTORATION
OF THE HIERARCHY, 1850
On 29 September 1850, Pope Pius IX issued a proclamation which

created a territorial hierarchy of twelve bishoprics in England and Wales.
Intended merely as an administrative measure to manage more effectively
the expanding Catholic population of the country, the bull nevertheless
caused a storm of Protestant protest, with writers and speakers throughout
the country denouncing this “Papal Aggression” as an insidious attempt of
a “foreign Power to fasten its authority upon our divisions”.1 The agitation
was further encouraged by the newly-appointed Roman Catholic
Archbishop of Westminster, Nicholas Wiseman, issuing a pastoral letter to
his flock in which he spoke of “Catholic” England being “restored to its
orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament from which its light had long
vanished”2, and Lord John Russell, the Prime Minster, publishing an open
letter to the Bishop of Durham, within which he virulently attacked the
Papal measure.3 These opinions ensured the revival of anti-Catholicism as

a legitimate method of popular expression in every locality throughout the
country during the latter months of 1850 and well into the following year.
Town and county meetings were initiated, Anglican and Dissenting
ministers preached from their pulpits, popular firebrands capitalised on the
anti-Catholic agitation by charging for lectures on the evils of the Papacy,
and effigies of the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman were burned in the streets
on November 5th. Not all anger was directed towards the Catholic
community however. The Prime Minister explicitly stated in his Durham
1
The Times, 19 October 1850.
2
English Historical Documents, 1833-1874, ed. by G.M. Young and W.D.
Handcock, English Historical Documents, ed. by David C. Douglas (gen. ed.), 12
vols (New York, 1956), XII, pt 1, pp. 365-6.
3
The full text of the Durham Letter is printed in Norman, Anti-Catholicism, pp.
159-61.
36 Chapter Two
Letter that the real threat lay not in the actions of “Pio Nono” but in the
perils of Tractarianism.4 Throughout the country, any High Churchman
who was even remotely perceived to be introducing what Russell termed
as the “mummeries of superstition” into the Anglican Church was singled
out as a “Puseyite”, experiencing regular and sometimes violent abuse in
their parish.5 The indignation against the Papal measure produced a total
of 2,616 memorials, bearing 887,525 signatures, comprising roughly five
per cent of the total population.6
The reaction to the restoration of the Catholic Hierarchy in October
1850 provides an example the way in which different anti-Catholic
standpoints could be unified against the perceived threat posed by the
Catholic religion. Indeed, the “Papal Aggression”, as it was termed,
received an unprecedented amount of attention precisely because it
transcended the boundaries of zealous anti-Catholic opinion. It was a
question which tugged on the heart strings of every loyal British citizen
regardless of political or religious stance. The North East of England
played its own part in the agitation, and it is the purpose of this chapter to
show that the regional response to this event was as passionate as
elsewhere. Local Protestant relations with the Catholic community
disintegrated as meeting after meeting unashamedly attacked the Catholic
religion. Moreover, the Evangelical/Dissenter composition of the political
agitation ensured that not only were Catholics much maligned but there
was also an assault on the small clique of Anglican clergy whose
“Puseyite” practices brought them unwanted attention in the post-Papal
Aggression period.
The Reaction of the Local Newspaper Press

It is important to firstly examine why the Restoration of the Hierarchy
was so vehemently opposed. The sheer scale of the protests indicated more
than just token gestures from anti-Catholic zealots. Undoubtedly, the issue
provided a number of reasons for those who shared extremist views to
oppose it but what is especially remarkable about the crisis was the way in
which the Papal bull attracted almost universal opposition, reacting as it
4
Norman, Anti-Catholicism, p. 160.
5
The most serious examples occurred in St Barnabas, Pimlico, where the Rev.
W.J.E. Bennett experienced almost constant physical opposition to his services in
the months following the Papal Aggression. See J. E. Pinnington, 'Bishop
Blomfield and St. Barnabas, Pimlico: The Limits of Ecclesiastical Authority',
Church Quarterly Review, 168 (1967), pp. 289-96.
6
Petitioning the Pope 37
did with other key ideological cornerstones of Victorian society, i.e.

nationalism and Liberalism. The nationalist dimension of a threat from a
foreign power, twinned with perceptions of a violation of civil and
religious liberties, allowed those of a more Liberal persuasion, who
generally tended to stay clear of “No Popery” baiting, to enter the fray.
Undoubtedly, the perceived encroachments of the Pope on British liberties
acted as means by which these views could be expressed legitimately but
an examination of the local Liberal and Conservative papers dominant in
the North East of England reveal just how blurred views were at the outset
of the crisis.
The initial reaction from the Liberal weeklies was somewhat muted.
The local press either chose to ignore the issue or attempted to play down
the significance of the Papal bull. The Sunderland Herald’s initial editorial
on 26 October found the reaction incomprehensible. “After all”, it opined
of the new bishoprics, “what is in a name, beyond an impertinence?”7
Similarly, the Liberal and Anglican Shields Gazette stated confidently that
it saw as much chance of the Pope obtaining absolute spiritual dominion of
England “as there is of the conversion of India, or China, or any other
heathen community, to the faith of the gospel”.8 It was the publication of
the Liberal Prime Minister’s Durham Letter which brought a hardening of
attitudes. For a leader who was a self-proclaimed follower of the principles
of civil and religious liberty the Durham Letter seemed an odd statement
of intent.9 It appeared that Russell had abandoned these principles in
favour of the “political possibilities” of a “No Popery” policy which in the
past had been the exclusive preserve of the Ultra-Protestant worldview.10
Whether the Prime Minister’s outburst was a spontaneous expression
of anti-Catholicism11 or a calculated political manoeuvre12 is perhaps

immaterial. It only succeeded in encouraging a nationwide revival of
popular anti-Catholicism. Indeed, for many Liberals, the publication of the
Durham Letter was a cause for celebration. Their Liberal leader had
7
Sunderland Herald, 26 October 1850.
8
Shields Gazette, 26 October 1850.
9
Usherwood, S., ‘“No Popery” Under Queen Victoria’, History Today, 23.4
(1973), p. 278.
10
R.J. Klaus, The Pope, the Protestants, and the Irish: Papal Aggression and
Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Nineteenth Century England. (New York and London:
Garland Publishing, 1987), pp. 172-3.
11
D.G. Paz, ‘Another Look at Lord John Russell and the Papal Aggression, 1850’,
The Historian, 45.1 (1982), p. 48; Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, p. 244.
12
J.B. Conacher, ‘The Politics of the “Papal Aggression” Crisis, 1850-51’,
Canadian Catholic Historical Association Report, 26 (1959), p. 17.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
megemlékeztetik a csendes, egyszerű s
boldog otthonra 59
IX. Szokatlan ünnepélyes szertartással
végbement leánykérés; a roham sikert igér,
de még semmi sem bizonyos 67
X. A díszruhás ünnepélyességet hasonló értékű
aprópénzzel fizetik vissza; a házassági
szerződés pontozatai pedig gondolkodóba
ejtik ő méltóságát 76
XI. Azon fejezet, melyben az «első leczke»
bölcseségeivel ismerkedünk meg 85
XII. Egy részről biztató szavak hangzanak, más
részről akadályok merülnek elé. Még egy kis
leczke 92
XIII. Két öreg úr pohár között összevesz. Az eddig
vett leczke magva oly termékeny földbe esik,
hogy a mama is megbámulja leánya
tudományát 98
XIV. Pál báró hazulról kétségbeejtő levelet, utána
mindjárt nem kedves vendégeket kap, kik
hitelét épen ott rontják le, a hol építkezni
szándékozott 106
XV. Szerencsétlen szemköztülés a szinházban, a
mi azonban egy más férfinak reménytelen
győzelmet szerez 113
XVI. A lovagias és nagyuri vőlegény, a ki semmitől
sem irtózik inkább, mint nyomorú pénzről
beszélni menyasszonyával 122
XVII. Új dráma a szinpadon, de a nézőtéren mégis
érdekesebb némajáték foly, melynek tárgyát
csak ketten értették meg 130
XVIII. A miről a doktor nem szokott «orvosi
bizonyítvány»-t adni, de a szép honorárium
csodákat művel 140
XIX. Rövid fejezet, mely mesés igérettel végződik
149
XX. Honnan kerül a segítség a végső
szükségben? de ideje is volt, hogy az
ezeregyéji mesék újra fölelevenüljenek 154
MÁSODIK RÉSZ.
I. Zsuzsi néni kibékülése, melyre újabb leczke

következik. Bizonyos emberek elutaznak
Pestről Fiuméig, s onnan még az egyenlítő
vonaláig is elhatolnak 165
II. Az ezeregyéji meséknek olyan folytatása
következik, hogy még Porczogh bárónak is
megáll az esze 175
III. A professzor leczkéjéből a tanítvány megint
plágiumot csinál, s ezzel elismert vőlegényét
szörnyűkép elkedvetleníti 184
IV. Szól egy öreg nagy úrról, a ki nejének szép
igéreteket tesz; de kérdés, megtartja-e
végrendeletében? 194
V. Utazási terv, mely egy részről reményt
ébreszt, más felől szörnyű boszúságot okoz.
A grófi korona sem oly kulcs többé, mely
minden lányszívet és minden pénzszekrényt
megnyit 203
VI. Erdély fejedelme oly levelet küld Gencsre,
hogy a báró kastélyának lakói rögtön
fellázadnak 213
Igen szerencsés nap, melyben egymás után
VII. két különös véletlen követi egymást 223
VIII. Két hűséges jó barátnak bizalmas levelezését

foglalja magában 233
IX. A midőn az ember ismeretlennel utazik, vagy
legalább csak az egyik ismeri a másikat 244
X. Bepillantunk a távirdai hivatal titkaiba 257
XI. A szorgalmas professzor még Gencsen sem
hanyagolja el leczke-óráit 266
XII. Egy üres hang, mely az emberi nyelvben
értelemmel sem bir 284
XIII. Melyben Spuller Jeannette saját
személyében lép fel és rangjához méltó
állásába visszavonul 296
XIV. Az illem még ma tiltja a szív hangján
megszólalni, de megengedi, hogy üzleti
ügyeket tisztába hozzunk 308
XV. Rövid leczke után a hosszú történet véget ér
319
KÉPJEGYZÉK.
1. Pálffy Albert arczképe II

2. Dorozsmay Tóbiás kínos halállal mult ki 3
3. A fogatból egy idősb s egy fiatal nő lépett le
14
4. Esztike kisasszony mindezt érdekkel hallgatta
55
5. – Először úgy fogtam fel a vállalatot 70
6. – A legkegyesb anyós is csak anyós marad
83
7. Esztike oly mozdulatot tett, melynek értelme,
hogy nem tudja 104
8. Varjas Andoriás… megdermedve csodálkozik
123
9. Egy kisasszony épen most jutott a sok élvet
igérő allegro-finale első ütemeihez 145
10. Karszékébe helyezkedvén, teljes
kényelemmel olvashatá 167
11. Porczogh báró meghajlott 183
12. Egyedül áll egy ablak bemélyedésében 207
13. Legelől két kisasszony lépdelt 225
14. – Azt kiáltják, – felelé a gróf 247
15. Oda vitték, a hová leginkább vágyott, a
konyhába 269
16. – Drága papom 284
17. – Isten vezérelje, Jeannette 307
18. – Diximus… 326
Javítások.
Az eredeti szöveg helyesírásán nem változtattunk.
A nyomdai hibákat javítottuk. Ezek listája:
15 ynelni nyelni
27 szaladgalás szaladgálás
57 eltalátjam eltaláljam
82 e ésorolt elésorolt
127 vern fogja verni fogja
146 legbeesesebb legbecsesebb
165 kiasszony kisasszony
212 polgokról dolgokról
214 írta, melyíe írta, melyet
257 hatralevő hátralevő
280 kisassozny kisasszony
310 rövin időn rövid időn
322 mogszorítja megszorítja
322 «táblaterítő«-t «táblaterítő»-t
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESZTIKE
KISASSZONY PROFESSZORA: REGÉNY ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in
these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it
in the United States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of
this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept
and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and
may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the
terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of
the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as
creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research.
Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given
away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with
eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject
to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free

distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or
any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and

Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree
to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be
bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from
the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in
paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be

used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people
who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a
few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic
works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.
See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with
Project Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the
collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the
individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the
United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in
the United States and you are located in the United States, we do
not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing,
performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the
work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of
course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg™
mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely
sharing Project Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name
associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of
this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its
attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without
charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also
govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most
countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the
United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms
of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying,
performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this
work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes
no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in
any country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other

immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must
appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™
work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or
with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is
accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is derived

from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a
notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright
holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the
United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must
comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through
1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted

with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works posted
with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of
this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project

Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files containing a
part of this work or any other work associated with Project
Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this

electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form,
including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you
provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work
in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in
the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing

access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the
method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The
fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty
payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on
which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your
periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked
as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information
about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who

notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that
s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and
discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project
Gutenberg™ works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of

any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in
the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90
days of receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™

electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend

considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe
and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating
the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may
be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to,
incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a
copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or
damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except

for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph
1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner
of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party
distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this
agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and
expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO
REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF
WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE
FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY
DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE
NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you

discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it,
you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by
sending a written explanation to the person you received the work
from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must
return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity
that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a
replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work
electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to
give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in
lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may
demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the
problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in
paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted
by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the
Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the
Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any
volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability,
costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or
indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur:
(a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b)
alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project
Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of

Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.
It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and
donations from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a
secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help,
see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,

Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to

the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can
be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the
widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small
donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax
exempt status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating

charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and
keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in
locations where we have not received written confirmation of
compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of
compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where

we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no
prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in
such states who approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make

any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of
other ways including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project

Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed

editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,

including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how
to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
back
back

Papists and Prejudice Popular Anti Catholicism and Anglo Irish Conflict in The North East of England 1845 70 Ludger Körntgen

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Papists and Prejudice Popular Anti Catholicism and Anglo Irish Conflict in The North East of England 1845 70 Ludger Körntgen

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Papists and Prejudice Popular Anti Catholicism and Anglo Irish Conflict in The North East of England 1845 70 Ludger Körntgen

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Papists and Prejudice Popular Anti

Catholicism and Anglo Irish Conflict in

Anti Catholicism in Victorian England Routledge Library

War Commemoration and Civic Culture in the North East

War Commemoration and Civic Culture in the North East

The Shamrock and the Cross Irish American Novelists

Public Administration in the Middle East and North

The Anglo Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England

Daring Dynasty Custom Conflict and Control in Early

Anti Methodism and Theological Controversy in

This book first published 2013

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Bush

ISBN (10): 1-4438-4672-4, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4672-1

Conventions ............................................................................................... vii

Abbreviations ........................................................................................... viii

Enlightened Bigotry: Anti-Catholicism and Liberty................................ 109

Conclusion ............................................................................................... 234

Bibliography ............................................................................................ 236

Index ........................................................................................................ 264

County Durham refers to the pre-1973 boundaries of the old county of

The word “Evangelical(s)” (upper case) refers exclusively to the

TWAS Tyne and Wear Archives Service

DCRO Durham County Record Office

DULSP Durham University Library Special Collections

RCHNDA Roman Catholic Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Archives

Until comparatively recently, anti-Catholic feeling was considered to

immigrants.5 Whatever the reasons for its prevalence, Victorian anti-

Pope of Rome: Militant Protestantism in Modern Scotland (Edinburgh:

anti-Catholic tension (1845-1870).7 The little research carried out on this

importance of various religious groups differing from setting to setting.

Durham was an Anglican and (almost by definition) Conservative

Geography (London: Historical Association, 1978); Anne Orde, Religion, Business

primarily by voluntary subscriptions from the laity.18 This increase in

included, among others, shipbuilding on Tyneside, coal mining in the

“Finding regional identity in the past, in any region in England, is

“North East” anti-Catholicism. Indeed, it is the intention of this book to

within regions. It will therefore not posit a theory of a “regional anti-

weaknesses, many places responded just as vehemently as other areas of

situation was further exacerbated by the strength of the local Catholic

THE IDEOLOGY OF ANTI-CATHOLICISM

Anti-Catholicism, as a set of ideas and beliefs, represents one of the

Victorian philosophy, anti-Catholicism defined what it meant to be

the Victorian population. These studies include Victorian anti-Catholic

the extremist anti-Catholic Evangelical organisation, the Protestant

This was certainly an exaggeration in Britain where an English Roman

While the Protestant claims to the authority of the Scriptures were

The Newcastle Journal, an Anglican High Church paper with a notable

For anti-Catholics, the most blasphemous element of this idol

solemn worship, no adoration, no penitent confession, no cry for help,

The claims of the Roman Catholic Church to be an “infallible” Church

denominational divide in the North East. According to the High Church

As it was only ignorance that enabled priestly power to maintain its

entitled “An Exposure of the Mummeries, Absurdities and Idolatries of

Catholics, though, transubstantiation was a doctrine that was closely

threat to the Protestant ideal of womanhood which was reflected in the